23rd July 2018
16:41pm: First Report of the fire in Ntaou
16:50pm: First Fire Helicopter is directed to the area with ETA 17:10
17:30pm: One Helicopter operates on the fire
18:00 -18:30pm: No Helicopter operates in the area.
18:06pm: The fire enters the village of Neos Voutzas.
18:20pm: The fire crosses the Marathonos Avenue.
18:25pm: The fire enters the village of Mati.
18:35pm: The fire reaches the shoreline.
08/01/25
[…]
The survivors in the immediate aftermath had only two ways to tell their story; to make their truth available for the world to hear and to contest the – by then – public opinion. As their voices were not heard, their stories fragmented and sensationalized but not truly witnessed, these images became their only – even if partial – testament to the truth, their trauma and evidence to their re-traumatization.
It was this photographic evidence that demonstrated the very fact of a crime.
The optical […] trace became […] an essential prerequisite for its acknowledgment by society12.
I was one of those people, maybe perhaps because I did not know – at the time that I shot those images – what really had happened. What was behind the smog that is not evident in those images…
I wonder whether I would have taken them if I knew?
What these images show is less than what they conceal.
How can an image speak of such horror, but not show it?
I read some newfound testimonies…
Covered by the smog.
Covered by the voices and the people that were screaming next to us.
Covered by the fear and the horror, there were people burning alive 20 meters away
from us. The camera pointed in their direction, they unseen.
I see now that which I did not see.